You’re 24 and may try to rely on evaluation from some professional during your high school days of at least 6 years earlier??? Good luck. As has been repeated several times above, did you notify prof in advance? As cheating would be prof’s obvious concern, what should any prof have done without prior notice? Should prof stay with his/her students in classroom, let a student leave and be unsupervised to do whatever (eg text a friend)? Or should prof follow student into bathroom to make sure a student doesn’t cheat which then brings up all sorts of other legal and creep issues for prof, and also includes leaving his/her other students alone unsupervised in classroom? Nice dilemma you put prof in.
What kind of grade drop are you taking about? In the overall scheme of things one bad grade in 7 semesters of courses is going to impact a cumulative GPA very little. A rocking LSAT score will go very far to mitigate one bad grade
Well, since “leaving mid-test” is an opportunity to cheat, and people w/o accomodations CAN have a temporary issue that requires a bathroom break, it just makes sense for long tests to be done “in sections” so that breaks can be scheduled between parts.
I never would have sought accomodations, but I did periodically have an issue that would have required “bathroom attention” within a 3 hour period, so I’m glad that I didn’t face an un-ending test period of 3 hours.
this may not be a popular stance, but I think requests for accomodations are getting out of hand. Needing a quiet room is understandable, but when people are being given as much as “twice as much time” to do important standardized tests (like LSAT, MCAT, etc), that just “throws off” the results. There are financial ramifications to getting higher scores, so allowing as much as twice as much time can translate into getting massive amounts of merit awards, that otherwise would not be earned.
Stop pretending like students don’t cheat while ‘going to the bathroom’. They use their smartphones in there, we all know it. It is a HUUUUUUUGE problem, and many students have been caught cheating while accessing technology like phones, smart watches, or whatever else outside of the exam. It is too hard to watch 100+ people AND try to follow people to the bathroom to make sure they’re not cheating. That’s simply the way the world works, there are cheaters, and they’ll do anything to get ahead. Always go to the bathroom before an exam. Don’t drink coffee or tea before an exam. Don’t like it? So what, that’s not our problem. You can’t take the SAT, MCAT, GRE, or any other type of exam like those and demand a bathroom break in the middle of it. Deal with it.
@Torveaux “You needed to handle this before the test.”
I did go before the test.
@MaineLonghorn Well if this is so written in stone why have I not had any problems in my other 7 semesters of higher ed. It was this one teacher. Also the Law School allows breaks for their 3 hour exams, so contradiction?
@MotherOfDragons Once again, I did go before the test. This didn’t stop the fact that I had to pee during the exam. Shocker right?
So many curmudgeons in here.
Personally I’m kind of shocked by some of the responses but I suppose that’s to be expected.
@Jugulator20 “What kind of grade drop are you taking about? In the overall scheme of things one bad grade in 7 semesters of courses is going to impact a cumulative GPA very little. A rocking LSAT score will go very far to mitigate one bad grade”
Not bad in the grand scheme of things. It’s not so much the grade, I can take a bad grade and have in the past without any complaints. My problem was I feel like I was singled out by this professor at the end of the semester. I got 16/20 points on the discussion component when I was literally one of the most prepared and talkative people in the class. I was pretty much 1 of 2 people in a class of about 20 that volunteered to answer things on their own. He also wrote extremely condescending things on my final paper and created false analogies in order to make my points seem wrong. When I challenged him on them a few days ago in email he just tried to tapdance around it, like philosophy professors typically do. The not letting me go to the bathroom I just felt was the most egregious since it dropped my grade the most. Let’s put it this way, any other teacher and I would have had an easy A. I really think he has something personal against me.
Speaking as one, I will point out that professors like their autonomy. We break rules left and right. At my school, every year the academic vice president sends out an email telling us not to cancel class in the two days before Thanksgiving break. Then after the break, she sends out an email where she chews out the half of us who cancelled class anyway.
My point is, it wouldn’t surprise me if most of your professors allow bathroom breaks during finals while a small minority stick to the letter of the law. It seems unfair, and maybe it is, but that’s the world you live in. No rational person would expect you to memorize ALL the rules, especially when so many faculty seem to make up their own rules. The flip side of that is that you will eventually get bit by a technicality. It happens to everyone.
@danfer91 How long do you think you could go w/o a break? 60 minutes? 90 minutes? more? less?
Since it’s too easy to “turn in your phone,” while having another one in your pocket, that req’t means nothing. Or a person could have a small tablet hidden on their person or a cheat-sheet shoved up their sleeve.
My kids’ high school had a “modified block” schedule which actually required that 3rd period be broken up with a lunch break. So, the teachers would split tests into two parts.
As soon as people learn that accommodations can provide unscheduled breaks, more and more people are going to avail themselves of that option…and cheat.
I find it hard to believe that you were unaware that cheating while out of the room is a big issue and that failing to discuss your medical condition with the professor at a school where leaving the room isn’t permitted could give them the impression that you were trying to cheat. Did you see the other thread where the professor is tracking students cheating during the exam? “A few students logged onto the course web site during the final exam and accessed the slides from lectures and the solutions to problem sets and old exams…The sneaky students already put course material on their phones…I could require that all students surrender their phones before the exam (or at least surrender them when they go to the restroom), but some will claim not to have brought a phone, while others may bring a tablet or a second phone.”
You should be evaluated for this by a doctor and if nothing can be done, then try to get an accommodation such that you can take your exams in two parts, turning in the first part before your break.
@danfer91 If you’re entering legal world, especially if you’re litigating cases, you’re going to have to grow thick skin as there will be judges who will have no problem “singling you out” and not in a good way in front of a courtroom full of people including your client for any number of reasons.
Rather surprised by how many people are saying that needing to use the restroom in an exam is unreasonable. 3 hours? Especially when stressed? And good luck concentrating when you feel like you need to go. Eeks. Not to mention, a restroom break isn’t that long. Unless they happen to have the answer all cued up already, there’s not much they can do.
And seriously, stop pretending like not letting students use the restroom for 3 hours is so typical. It’s not.
In college, generally professors are a bit more trusting about these things, although I suppose that depends on the integrity of the type of students the particular college attracts. I’ve had professors who prefer to stay in their office during tests, just telling us to head over there if there are any questions, I had a professor who gave us extra time and left mid-way for lunch, etc. Not to mention take-home or online exams and finals. So you wouldn’t even have to bother asking in those situations.
And the people using high school as an example are really not giving an equivalent example. Standardized testing in high school has much more frequent breaks than that, probably for that reason. And high school classes are generally what, an hour at most? Maybe more for block scheduling, but not 3 hours long. So in class exams are not going to be 3 hours. And finals tend to be over an hour, but again, no where near 3 hours.
So no, it’s not that unreasonable to think that using the restroom once in 3 hours might be allowed.
@danfer91, it’s funny you wrote that, because apparently you aren’t reading my posts or the link I provided. It IS UT’s clearly stated rule for ALL exams, not just final exams. It doesn’t matter if the law school has different rules. You’re not in law school yet.
Correct, but the opposite is also true: it’s not so unreasonable to think that bathroom breaks are not allowed. And just bcos one professor allows them in one class doesn’t mean another professor should in another class. The the former, cheating may not much matter (such as in a Lit/Hume course which requires long essays), but in the latter, cheating could be a huge factor in grading (such as in a lower division STEM course which has a curve)…
I wasn’t aware that all profs have to be typical or reasonable in their testing policies. Like many profs I had back in the day, OP’s prof had a policy, leave and you’re done. I often sat in lecture halls with 200+ students taking a final. People getting up to take bathroom breaks can be disruptive. I’d be very pissed off if people all around me were coming and going for bathroom breaks and breaking my concentration
I’m finding this thread interesting…I can sympathize with the OP. I’m sure he’s not the only one who might find 3 hours to be a long time. On the other hand, I do understand the concern regarding cheating and with so many students to keep track of. If I were a professor, I guess I would give a two part final with a break in between to avoid the situation in the future.
Got me thinking…what about online classes? How do they prevent cheating on tests? (At least they can take a bathroom break at their own discretion!)
I also asked my kids about this…They both replied that at their colleges many of their tests are take home, and even the ones that are in class, the professors often leave the room. I love that they are held to a higher standard and expected to be honorable and trustworthy.
We just had exam week and I had numerous students get up and go out to the bathroom and come back. Not uncommon. My only thought about it was that I should have told Girl 2 to wait until Girl 1 had returned before going out. Most likely wasn’t a problem, since I’ve never seen Girl 2 and Girl 1 interact.
When in grad school, one of the girls was stupid enough to throw her cheat materials in the garbage in the Ladies room during/after one of the qualifiers. She was caught and summarily dismissed.
I can sympathize with the need to use facilities during a 3 hour unbroken time. That seems to be the bigger problem since many people have no idea that something might happen during that 3 hour period that might require “bathroom attention.”
I didn’t read the whole thread, but test centers such as where the MCAT is given, mandate that nothing and I mean nothing but the clothes on your back can go into the testing area with you. No purses, no jackets, certainly no phones, nothing in your pockets. Everything brought to the test site has to be in a clear plastic bag and put in a locker. Students have no access to the locker during the test.
This brings up a point no one has mentioned. If a professor is going to proctor an exam without teaching assistants (probably usually the case) and doesn’t want to leave the students unsupervised, then he/she cannot leave the room for 3 hours EITHER. Inasmuch as the professoriate is older than the student body, it would be more likely that WE would need a bathroom break than that the students would.